Assessing the Quality of Mentoring: Evidence-Based Development of a Training Programme for Biology Mentors and Pre-service Biology Teachers for Scientific Issues

Abstract

AbstractMentoring is a key scaffold where pre-service biology teachers are supported by an experienced biology teacher (i.e. a mentor). A SWOT analysis revealed that our federal state is missing biology mentor teacher (BMT) training. We conducted a design-based research study to create a training programme for our biology mentor teachers. The first aim of the study was to develop the theoretical background for the complex process for biology mentor teacher training. The tetrahedron model developed by Prediger and colleagues was adapted to describe the challenging situation for BMT training. Our second aim was to evaluate the mentoring quality and subject-specific content of mentoring dialogues in the design cycle to connect this study to previous research. Our results show that mentoring quality increases after BMT training. Surprisingly, the mentor teacher and the pre-service teacher differ in their assessment. The evaluation of content of mentoring dialogues shows a higher share of discussions on content knowledge than in previous studies. All in all, this is one of the first studies on BMT training. This paper is an invitation to continue the work in this important field of biology teacher training.